Optimal human-machine collaboration for enhanced cost-sensitive biometric authentication

Despite growing interest in human-machine collaboration for enhanced decision-making, little work has been done on the optimal fusion of human and machine decisions for cost-sensitive biometric authentication. An elegant and robust protocol for achieving this objective is proposed. The merits of the protocol is illustrated by simulating a scenario where a workforce of human experts and a score-generating machine are available for the authentication of handwritten signatures on, for example, bank cheques. The authentication of each transaction is determined by its monetary value and the quality of the claimed author’s signature. A database with 765 signatures is considered, and an experiment that involves 24 human volunteers and two different machines is conducted. When a reasonable number of experts are kept in the loop, the average expected cost associated with the workforce-machine hybrid is invariably lower than that of the unaided workforce and that of the unaided machine.